WARNING.....Don't lean your tablet too far and allow the screen to flip, it will be catastrophic

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

Gear: Inspire 1 v2 with zenmuse XT
iPad iOS
PIX4D capture

Well I lost an $11000 investment this morning. Thermal imaged 3 million sqft of roofing with multiple battery changes. PIX4D worked flawlessly
Until the final landing after capturing all images. This is what I think happened. As it was decending, I leaned forward to pick something up and the screen flipped on my tablet, when it did the Inspire rolled over and shot towards the ground and it was unrecoverable at low altitude. Can’t say it was anyones fault but my own ingorance of this being an issue. Painful lesson to learn but on the positive side, I recovered the SD card with all images complete. At least I have a deliverable now after Drone Deploy let me down and PIX4D worked.

2

Hi Keith,

I am really sorry to hear about this and the bad experience you had. I hope that it won’t happen to you again and won’t impact you too much.
In case of emergency, keep in mind that you always have the possibility to interrupt a mission. An article on our KB is explaining the different ways to do so. You can have a look at it [here

](https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016229212--Android-iOS-How-to-interrupt-a-mission)In your case, I assume that even if the screen flipped on your tablet, it would have been possible to take back manual control of the drone using the remote controller, either by switching and changing the flight mode or by canceling the RTH if it was in progress.

Best

3

Good Morning,

Would it be possible for PIX4D to test this and see if it is a true problem? If it is maybe PIX4D can push out and update to fix this. I’m not saying this is exactly the problem but i think it’s worth testing.

Keith

4

Hi Keith,

I will raise what you reported to the developer’s team and make some tests. Actually, I would need to know precisely what do you mean by " the screen flipped". Do you mean the application made a rotation on the screen? And it leads to the drone behavior you described?

Best,

5

Yes, as you turn your tablet the screen will follow and flip. As I had it attached to my controller, I leaned forward and at a certain point, the screen flipped (Rotated) 180 degrees as if I turned the tablet upside down.

 

 

Regards

Keith

 

6

Also, does pix4D have flight logs, if so can you tell me how to access them?

7

The orientation of your tablet should have nothing to do with the flight of the Inspire while it is flying an auto mission.  The Inspire has no knowledge of the tablets orientation.  More likely something like a control stick or button may have been bumped with your body while bent over.

8

Hello Keith,

Brad is right, It seems almost impossible that a change in the tablet orientation induce the behavior you described. Something else has probably happened. Some logs are generated and can be accessed in the Pix4D folder, in the folder of the mission that was flown during that day.

Best,

9

Ok thank you, I will try to find the logs and see if it shows the issue.